Goal-Setting for Injured Athletes: Maintaining Motivation and Focus during Recovery
This blog will provide practical guidance on setting and achieving goals for injured athletes to stay motivated and focused throughout their recovery process.
What is goal-setting?
For most athletes, the ultimate goal or result after getting injured is to recover. But, it’s been said before: “A goal without a plan is just a wish”.
And that’s what skill of goal-setting is:
Goal-setting is the process of devising a plan to achieve the result you want.
What is the purpose of goal-setting in sports injury rehabilitation?
Goal-setting during injury rehabilitation has many purposes and benefits.
It helps you identify clear, measurable objectives to help you return to your sport physically and mentally ready.
It provides a source of motivation which leads to increased effort and persistence, which typically leads to better results.
It can have positive effects on physiological and psychological healing.
It helps you stay compliant and adhere to the rehab process - such as attending appointments, completing exercises, etc.
It can positively influence attitude, acceptance, and confidence in the recovery process.
It gives you a sense of achievement when goals are met, which increases self-efficacy and self-confidence.
How to Set Goals for Sports Injury Rehabilitation
Athletes tend to set goals for their performances and careers in sport all the time. So, the process of setting goals during the sports injury rehab process may seem obvious.
It is easy to stay focused on the outcome (“I want to get better” / “I want to play again”), however it is more difficult to stay focused on the day-to-day process. This is where goal-setting comes in.
Here are some ways to set goals in sports injury rehabilitation to make it the most likely that you will achieve them.
Consider different time frames for goals
As previously mentioned, the ultimate aim of any rehabilitation is a return back to sport at full fitness. Sometimes, depending on the injury, this can be a long process. Different time-frames should be considered when setting goals:
Long-term goals: associated with the final level of recovery (end-stage)
Medium-term goals: associated with different stages of recovery (acute post-injury, mid-stage, end-stage / return to play)
Short-term / daily goals: daily goals to be achieved in each therapy / rehab sessions. Should support medium- and long-term goals
Lifestyle goals: associated with supportive lifestyle factors like sleep, nutrition, substance use, relationships, work/school, etc.
It is easy to get lost in the long-term / dream goals. Breaking those down into the medium- and short-term and lifestyle goals makes it feel much more manageable.
Consider different types of goals
The different types of goals are:
Outcome goals are focused on the outcome of an event. An example of an outcome goal in sports injury rehab is returning to your sport at a pre-injury level and making the starting lineup.
Performance goals are focused on achieving a level of performance compared to your own previous performances, and not compared to the performance of others. An example of a performance goal in sports injury rehab is increasing your knee range of motion from 90 degrees to 120 degrees.
Process goals are focused on the actions and tasks that you must engage in to achieve the desired performance or outcome. An example of a process goal in sports injury rehab is completing a prescribed set of exercises five days per week without missing a session.
Using a combination of different types of goals in your goal-setting process is more effective then using one type of goal in isolation.
Furthermore, there are different functions of goals, all of which should be considered
Physical: Goals related to strength, range of motion, endurance, flexibility, etc.
Psychological: Goals related to motivation, confidence, pain tolerance, anxiety, emotions, etc.
Performance: Goals related to technical and tactical development
Set goals that you can measure
You want to be able to measure your progress and know when you’ve achieved your goals. It is really easy to feel like things aren’t progressing or are progressing too slowly. You may even be surprised when you’ve hit strength and range of motion goals.
When you feel like rehab isn’t progressing, it can decrease your motivation, negatively affect your mood, and contribute to negative self-talk - all of which may lead to disengaging with rehab and having a more negative experience.
Being able to measure and achieve goals during the process keeps you engaged and gives you that sense of success, which ultimately keeps you motivated and persistent during the different phases of rehab.
Set challenging but realistic goals
Your goals should be a little bit scary. They should give you that uneasy-but-excited feeling in your stomach. There is a quote by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that says “If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.”
This means that you want to make sure your goals are challenging. If you reach them too quickly, or they seem really easy, you won’t be motivated to work hard to achieve them. If they are not realistic, you may ask yourself “what’s the point” and also lose the motivation to work towards them.
Finding the sweet spot of making them challenging, but still within reach, usually helps keep you motivated to keep going, even when times are tough.
State your goals in a positive manner
Our brains see the words that are written on the page. For example, if your goal is “Don’t miss any rehab sessions”, what your brain sees is “miss rehab sessions” - which is NOT what we want. Instead, using positive or task-oriented language can be more helpful. For the above example, we might switch the language to “Stay consistent with all rehab sessions”, which is essentially saying the same thing.
Use present tense when writing your goals
Writing your goals in present tense helps tell your brain that you are working on this right NOW. Writing your goals in future tense means that it might be something you do in the future. Simply changing “I will get back to the starting line up” to “I will get back to the starting lineup” places your goal in the present moment, and you act on that as if it IS happening, rather than *potentially* going to happen.
Ensuring your goals for rehabilitation are effective
First… How do we know if goals are effective?
Well - goals are effective if they achieve one of a few things.
They positively influence your performance. (This can be a subjective or objective improvement).
They improve your psychological development. You develop mental skills & life skills while working towards your goals.
You learn something in the process of setting and striving to achieve them. (Spoiler alert: Actually achieving the goal is not necessary for it to be effective)
Making sports injury rehab goals more effective:
1. Share your goals with someone
Even though it’s scary (cause *what if* you don’t achieve them?!), sharing your goals publicly, or even privately with 1-2 other people, increases your accountability to achieve them. Telling others can also help generate support, excitement, ideas, and motivation to be successful.
2. Fully integrate your goals into the rehab process
You should be doing this collaboratively with your sports injury rehab professional (physio, chiro, athletic therapist, etc.) so that they can help you figure out what goals are realistic and achievable. Working together in a collaborative process with all members of your healthcare team makes it even more effective
3. Accept and commit to your goals.
Having a shared ownership over your goals, along with your rehab team, helps to facilitate commitment and motivation, and therefore adherence to the process.
4. Monitor, evaluate, and adjust regularly
Consistently evaluating your goals through regular feedback will help you understand your progress and increase your feelings of achievement through a difficult process. This is why it’s important to make your goals easy to measure, so that you can tell if you are on track, or if they need to be adjusted.
5. Make your goals meaningful
Understanding the WHY behind your goals, makes them meaningful to you, which makes you more likely to adhere to the rehab process. If you are unsure why you are doing something in your rehab, make sure to ASK your rehab practitioners.
Developing a goal-setting plan
It can be difficult to develop a sports injury rehab goal-setting plan on your own. You know you want to get back to the field, but you don’t know HOW to get there.
Firstly, it’s important to WRITE THINGS DOWN. You may have lots of ideas in your head, but writing it down helps you organize your thoughts on paper and makes it make sense.
Second, writing out a plan helps you track your progress and adjust your goals as needed throughout the recovery process.
Don’t know how to start? We have a few options:
The Injury Rehab Roadmap to Recovery is part of my signature program, The Adversity Advantage: A mental skills game plan for sports injury rehabilitation. In this part of the program, we build out a full-on personalized plan for your rehab goals, and lay it all out visually so you can see your progress each week. You can join the waitlist for The Adversity Advantage HERE.
We also offer one-on-one coaching where I guide you through the steps and we build it out together. If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching, you can find out more HERE.
